Siemens & PAS to provide industrial-control-system cybersecurity

Siemens and PAS announced their global strategic partnership to provide essential industrial-control-system cybersecurity. The partnership will provide fleet-wide, real-time monitoring for control systems. By leveraging the unique capabilities of both companies, this partnership aims to provide customers with: (1) deep analytics required to identify and inventory proprietary assets; and (2) visibility to detect and respond effectively to attacks across the operating environment.

As the utilities and oil and gas sectors become increasingly digital to achieve revenue and efficiency gains, there is a corresponding need to identify cyber-threats at their earliest stages—going beyond compliance regulations to secure operations, according to the partners. Organizations in these sectors must defend their entire digital footprint against persistent and highly sophisticated cyber threats without disrupting business processes.

According to recent research conducted by Ponemon Institute on the state of cybersecurity in the U.S. oil and gas industry, deployment of cybersecurity measures in the industry isn’t keeping pace with the growth of digitalization in oil and gas operations. Just 35 percent of survey respondents rate their organization’s OT cyber readiness as high. Sixty-eight percent of respondents say their organization experienced at least one cyber compromise, while 61 percent say their organization’s industrial control systems protection and security is not adequate.

The Siemens-PAS global strategic partnership bridges the visibility gap for distributed, legacy control assets to provide a comprehensive view into fleet security, according to the partners. Focused on gathering detailed configuration data down to the sensor, the Siemens-PAS union will enable customers to secure proprietary systems in multi-vendor environments, guarding against cyber-attacks as well as unauthorized engineering changes.

“Utilities and the oil and gas sector confront sophisticated, persistent and aggressive cyber-threats in the operational environment. Enhanced fleet-wide visibility is critical to detecting attacks and anomalies at the earliest possible stage,” said Leo Simonovich, Siemens vice president for global cybersecurity. “With Siemens’ deep operational monitoring expertise and PAS’ leadership developing solutions to protect industrial control systems, this partnership is singularly-positioned to provide essential visibility, build a mindset of perpetual vigilance and ultimately strengthen the energy industry defenses.”

“With smarter, integrated automation comes a difficult challenge that has repercussions from the boardroom to facility operations: ICS cybersecurity,” says Eddie Habibi, founder and CEO of PAS Global. “It is generally well understood that you cannot secure what you cannot see.

That is why accurate, up-to-date visibility of system inventory is a fundamental element of any cybersecurity solution. Our partnership with Siemens delivers a managed security service that covers the entire industrial enterprise.”